


Useful Lessons

by Arquus_Malvaceae



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Basically, Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, hohenheim elric mentioned, nina tucker mentioned, shou tucker mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 06:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arquus_Malvaceae/pseuds/Arquus_Malvaceae
Summary: When people find out that you’re a twelve year old without a parent, everyone suddenly wants to become a teacher. Sometimes you get lucky with a few of your wannabe teachers and it never occurs to you that some of the others might not have your best interests in mind.





	Useful Lessons

When people find out that you’re a twelve year old without a parent, everyone suddenly wants to become a teacher. Even the ones you never asked. The problem for the Elric brothers was that … they  _ did _ ask. They asked a lot of people. Because Ed and Al were smart and precocious and eager to learn by any means necessary. Books, their dad’s notes, watching alchemist masters. But by far the most effective learning tool they’d found was experience. Partially this was because practical, hands-on experience just gives you valuable knowledge and instincts that books just can’t teach you. Partially it was because Ed was stubborn, thought he knew best, and wouldn’t take anyone’s contrary word otherwise; and hand-in-hand with that was Al’s mostly unshaken belief in his big brother.

 

But the biggest reason, the most poignant reason, maybe the most tragic reason, was that when you’re twelve years old and eager to learn and suddenly have this whole wide world of information at your fingertips, and folks just lining up to impart wisdom? Sometimes you end up trusting the wrong people. Sometimes you get lucky with a few of your wannabe teachers and it never occurs to you that some of the others might not have your best interests in mind.

 

Shou Tucker was one of those. The Sewing Life Alchemist with the small but extensive library who helped Ed study for the State Alchemist’s Exam; and then turned around and did the unthinkable to his only daughter. It never occurred to the Elric brothers that a quiet, brilliant man who shared their scientific passion and lust for knowledge might twist that passion into somethin grotesque and sacrifice his own family for it. The first in a long line of manipulative, selfish, unscrupulous adults who presented themselves to the Elrics as mentors, but were ultimately unable to keep their ugly, selfish motives hidden for long.

 

But while these attempted mentors may have failed in teaching the brothers what either wanted or hoped, the Elrics did learn something. Quite possibly their most important lesson: Not everyone can be trusted.

 

By the time the boys were fifteen and fourteen, they had a decent grasp on how to tell allies from likely enemies. It not only helped them navigate the world as a State Alchemist and his brother hunting the fabled and forbidden Philosopher’s Stone, it also probably saved their lives in the lead-up to the tragedy at Lior. Ed and Al learned to rely on themselves, to trust themselves and each other, to trust their own eyes, their instincts, and their own experiences.

 

Something does happen, though, when you’ve lived your entire adolescence having to be wary of all the people you meet; when you go weeks having to wonder if the people you  _ have _ come to trust are really as trustworthy as you thought; when everything you were fighting for finally comes to an end and you’ve lost the very world you’ve known … Then, when you’re lost and alone in someplace entirely new, unsure if anything you thought was true was more than just a dream … you can get tired. Tired of being alert. Tired of being suspicious. And some of those lessons that kept you alive before don’t seem so important anymore and fall to wayside a bit.

 

And maybe you end up trusting the one person who, even as a naive twelve year old, you swore you’d never trust.

 

And maybe, Ed supposes, that’s not necessarily such a bad thing. If he hadn’t trusted his father, after all, he never would’ve seen his little brother, healthy and happy in his own body again.

  
- _ End _


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